According to a Lake Shore Railway Historical Society Museum news release, MCVX No. 7764 was last with the Firefighters Education and Training Foundation in Massachusetts as a training locomotive for firefighters. The locomotive carried MCVX reporting marks and the last number it had when it was part of CSX Transportation’s active roster.
General Electric built the locomotive in 1970 at its nearby Lawrence Park, Pa., shops for Seaboard Coast Line as No. 1776. The four-axle 3,600-hp locomotive was soon renumbered 1813 to make way for the Seaboard Bicentennial locomotive, another U36B, to receive “1776.”
“The U36B is a very rare GE locomotive model and we are thankful for its inclusion in our collection,” says Ray Grabowski Jr., president of Lake Shore Railway Historical
Society, “Its earlier re-purposing as a training unit just enhances Lake Shore’s educational function. Look for it to continue to be used as a teaching tool here soon.”
The locomotive joins eight other GE locomotives and one Heisler at the museum in North East, about 20 miles northeast of Erie.
I’m surprised that a U-36 made it into the latest CSX all blue scheme.
Given my druthers it would be returned to this: http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3582697
Not many of the U-Boats left as they were a cheaply built alternative to EMD’s price-gouging antics. Perserverance though, and the bumbling FUBAR that was the SD50 put GE on top, never to look back.
Wouldn’t it be neat if they painted it for the Bicentennial 1776 livery?
That just totally made my day. Four-cycle forever.
I was not aware that the U36B’s had gotten so rare. I wondered about the fate of the units the original Auto Train had. For a while, Auto Train combined their trains with Amtrak’s “Floridian” between Sanford, Florida and Louisville. I travelled behind the U36B’s on the “Floridian” section when I was enrolled at the University of Iowa.
This is good to hear a rare GE locomotive is headed for preservation 20 miles Northeast of Erie, PA where GE locomotives were built for many years until the locomotive plant closed.
Now if we could just get the museum or any other RR museum to save a GE C30-7 before they all sadly get scraped that would be great.